This spring/summer the lab is attending more conferences than usual – typically, we attend one meeting as a group and maybe another one individually or in pairs. The first half of 2015 looks like it will be pretty busy for the lab. Already in February, Burcu Urgen attended the Cambridge Representational Similarity Analysis Workshop organised by the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University; she also travelled to visit collaborators and gave talks at University College London and Università degli Studi di Parma. Early March, a group of us are attending HRI 2015 in Portland (more below); Prof. Saygin is likely to attend CNS 2015 in San Francisco; the lab has several talks and posters at VSS 2015 in Florida and in May, as usual; and HBM 2015 is in Honolulu this June, with a small number of lab members planning to attend and present work. As the conference dates approach, we will try to post our lab’s presentations here.

Below is our group’s work at HRI 2015 in Portland, OR first eek. If you are in town, please come say hello.

PS: Prof. Saygin will have an opening for a postdoctoral researcher soon and would be happy to talk to any potential candidates. The position is for someone who is interested in social cognition and HRI, and has expertise in using machine learning and preferably also neuroimaging (e.g., EEG, fMRI). If you are interested or know someone who is, try to connect with us at HRI, or another meeting in the near future.

Hope to see you in Portland!

Image from http://hi-news.ru/robots/chtivo-shest-priznakov-gryadushhego-vosstaniya-mashin.html

As part of the test, I shall upload a comic about my favorite animal. Platypus evolution is indeed fascinating, and I recommend everyone to read up on it. This comic is from Married to the Sea, a webcomic.